What do you know about the USS Alabama? “It is a boat” is a perfectly acceptable answer in this context because that is correct! It is almost certainly a boat, and it is a boat that’s causing quite a lot of trouble in the World of Warships community based on its means of acquisition. The short version is that it’s being given out to select supertesters, players who dedicate an enormous amount of time and effort to testing the game’s patches and offering feedback.

Why is this controversial? Well, it’s a really good boat. Like, “very competitive in high-end gameplay” good. And there’s no way to get it outside of dedicating a great deal of time to being a supertester and then getting selected to be given the boat, which also has an enormous amount of hull detailing (very important if you’re the sort of person who knows about boats). In short, it’s a really powerful boat that’s more or less inaccessible for most players and only goes out to a very limited subset of players. That’s… kind of unpleasant, yes? And it does nicely explain the boat controversy.